Catholics to have role in determining Senate runoff results Susan Varlamoff December 27, 2020 4:42 pm retired director of the University of Georgia’s Office of Environmental Sciences As Georgia is the political epicenter of the nation with two U.S. Senate runoff races, the 1.2 million Catholics in the state may play an outsized role in deciding which party controls the Senate. Susan Varlamoff In a Nov. 11 op-ed published in The New York Times, Michael Wear states that President-elect Joe Biden won Catholics nationally – an 8-point, 3-million vote swing from 2016, in the preliminary accounting. It seems Pope Francis, leader of the Roman Catholic Church, and Catholic President-elect Joe Biden, share several common priorities – climate change, caring for the poor and immigration. In fact, when Pope Francis congratulated the president-elect on winning the electoral college vote, he expressed an interest in working with Biden on these issues.